Biographies

A short paperback from Omnibus Press, published in November 1997 and billed as the first illustrated biography of the band, written after The Bends had made their name.

A short paperback biography published by Virgin in 1997, by Steve Malins, who had written a life of Paul Weller for the same house the year before.

Jonathan Hale, who had written about the band for magazines and newspapers, published this unauthorised history with ECW Press in March 1999. It runs from the band's beginnings in Oxfordshire through The Bends and OK Computer. The band took no part, so Hale worked from published interviews, talks with journalists and fan websites, whose help he credits. Recording sessions and tours run through it, and photographs, notes on some of the songs and an annotated discography fill out the rest.

Martin Clarke's biography for Plexus in London follows the band from school in Oxfordshire through “Creep” and OK Computer, built from press interviews and articles and set with photographs. Revised editions in 2003, 2006 and 2009 carried it on through Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief. Christelle Mangeol's French translation, Radiohead: le coeur et l'âme, came out from Camion Blanc in 2002.

Mac Randall was East Coast editor of Launch magazine when Delta published this in 2000, just ahead of Kid A. The band turned down his requests, so he leans on what they had said in earlier interviews. It opens at Irving Plaza in New York in June 1997, spends longest on the Oxford years and Abingdon School, then takes the records in turn. Updated editions followed; the 2012 Backbeat one runs to The King of Limbs, and PopMatters found its later chapters thin.

A biography published by Boxtree in 2000, written by the music journalist Alex Ogg, whose other books include one on the Dead Kennedys.

Trevor Baker wrote this life of Thom Yorke in 2009 without Yorke or the band. He worked from old issues of Q and Melody Maker and from friends of Yorke's at Exeter University. Drowned in Sound's reviewer found that partway through it stops trying to get at the man and settles into retelling the band's story.

Barney Hoskyns, editor of the Rock's Backpages archive, put together and introduced this anthology for Constable in 2019. The writing starts with the earliest local press, when the band were still On a Friday, and runs to A Moon Shaped Pool. Alongside the interviews and reviews are essays by Mark Greif and Simon Reynolds and profiles by Will Self and John Harris.

Dan Caffrey is a playwright and critic in Austin who has written for Consequence of Sound and Pitchfork, and he came round to the band late, through In Rainbows one Chicago winter. His volume in Backbeat's FAQ series (2021) takes the history topic by topic, with biographical chapters on each member and on Nigel Godrich. It also goes down side roads such as the humour in the songs and the hip-hop artists who have sampled them.

John Aizlewood, who has written for Mojo, Q and The Guardian, tells the band's thirty years from indie clubs to stadiums in this Palazzo Editions hardback from 2022. It carries photographs, with tour schedules and tracklists along the way. One early reviewer noted how much of it rests on quotes from magazine interviews.